SHIOTA ATSUSHI

JKiC Industry-Academia-Medicine
Collaboration Department Head

Developing environment to make JKiC as a hot spot attracting researchers and clinicians.

While I was in the Silicon Valley in the United States, I have seen dramatic changes of industrial structure shifting over to the life science fields and academic outcomes in the fields became industrialized in rapid succession. I still believe that in Japan we could take unique approach, although I intend to learn useful lessons from the United States and establish JKiC as an example of successful industry-academia-medicine collaboration in Japan.

Important roles of the industry-academia-medicine collaboration department are to transform research outcomes into intellectual property and solidly support the promotion of clinical research conducted according to firmly grounded ethical guidelines.

We must take measures to facilitate good communication between the industrial and academic worlds both possess different cultures. We also work to expand the interest of academia which has only focused on basic researches to include converting research achievements into intellectual properties and clinical and therapeutic applications.

We are going to prioritize appealing to and working in collaboration with outsides including policy makers. Taking new drug developments as an example, even if JSR Corporation or one of our group companies have capability to produce active pharmaceutical ingredients as a contractor, we are not be able to perform clinical developments, obtain approvals from regulatory agencies or sales and distribute the products to global market. Collaborations with pharmaceutical companies are definitely needed. Conducting activities while putting these matters in our perspective from the research stage, we will be able to conduct the focus of research more firmly.

JKiC is currently comprised of four disciplines whereas we expect interdisciplinary collaboration in the institution. For example, if a miniature organ was created in vitro form the Stem Cell Biology & Cell Based Medicine field, it might be possible to embed microorganism studies in the Microbiome field to permit observation of host and bacteria interaction easier than ever.

JKiC should not be confined in the four disciplines only but we are open to anybody at Keio University. At Keio University, there are so many international level researchers and clinicians. Our mission is to develop JKiC as a place to motivate researchers and clinicians at Keio come to JKiC to consulted any collaborative opportunities.

We expect JKiC to become a hot spot that gathers research seeds and clinical needs.